A contemporary anarcho-socialist woman

abuse of power

Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a 75-year-old Syrian woman to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house…

One of the men Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi had raised from infancy as her own son. The other was his friend. They were at her house delivering bread.

What shocking abuse of power by the religious police, sanctioned by a theocratic government. However, the people aren’t taking this silently anymore.

“It’s made everybody angry because this is like a grandmother,” Saudi women’s rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider told CNN. “Forty lashes — how can she handle that pain? You cannot justify it.”

…The actions of the religious police have come under increased scrutiny in Saudi Arabia recently, as more and more Saudis urge that the commission’s powers be limited.

I see this as hardly about religion in actuality. This is about control of a populace through fear, using religion as a justification. Which is what I believe any theocracy will look like.

Al Huwaider had great thoughts on this matter: “This is the problem with the religious police, watching people and thinking they’re bad all the time. It has nothing to do with religion. It’s all about control. And the more you spread fear among people, the more you control them.”

Indeed. That is why my liberation and her liberation, while surrounded by such different material circumstances, are bound together. Control and debasement of women is a tool used by corrupted power around the world. Whether in Saudi Arabia or America or elsewhere, women who refuse to be controlled and who insist that they are full human beings are a threat to the powers-that-be and a force for change.

The CIA’s station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.

…The discovery of more than a dozen videotapes showing the CIA officer engaged in sex acts with other women has led the Justice Department to broaden its investigation to include at least one other Arab country, Egypt, where the CIA officer had been posted earlier in his career, according to law enforcement officials.

…Officials say one of the alleged victims is seen on tape, in a “semi-conscious state.”

…”It has the potential to be quite explosive if it’s not handled well by the United States government,” said Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who specializes in women’s issues in the Middle East.

The onetime Bush Attorney General admitted Tuesday that “skittish” law firms won’t hire him after his departure under fire from the Justice Department surrounding his role in the political firings of nine US Attorneys.

…Sounding dumbfounded, the 53-year-old former judge and corporate lawyer told the Wall Street Journal, “What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?”

…In the interview, he also said he’s writing a book but hasn’t yet found a publisher. He also sounded flummoxed by the amount of rancor leveled at his stewardship of the Justice Department, saying he wasn’t the one to blame.

“For some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with,” Gonzales said. “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

If you want to refresh yourself as to Gonzales’ crimes against America, you can do so in a concise article at The Washington Monthly.